The present application relates to asset management in a collaborative environment.
Enterprise systems tend to have assets which are shared among multiple users. In this context, an asset can refer to an individually identifiable and accessible holder of content, such as a document, a file, a photograph, an illustration, a layout, a graph, a font file, a library file, a template file, or a graphic figure that is involved in the production of a project. The users can be involved in one or more projects, and the assets can be shared among different projects as well.
An asset can be stored in a repository (e.g., a server that stores shared assets), and a user may typically check out an asset from the repository to modify the asset. The repository can also provide a common namespace for assets that are shared among multiple users. The check-out procedure involves one or more explicit steps that the user must perform in order to modify the asset. Such explicit steps typically involve ensuring that the asset can be modified by only one user at a time, and permitting only one asset check out at a time. When the user has completed their modifications to the asset, the asset can be sent and stored in the repository again by checking in the asset with one or more explicit steps.